


Time Echo Sensitivity

by CodaDelta



Category: Torchwood
Genre: AU- Ianto can see ghosts, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:54:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24288481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CodaDelta/pseuds/CodaDelta
Summary: "Ianto quickly learnt not to tell people about it. About the grey shrouded figures that stared mournfully or confused out at people who couldn't see them. Who lingered, in sight but unseen, only half human in shape, not quite fitting in the world, but not quite standing out from it either."Ianto Jones can see ghosts.
Relationships: Gwen Cooper/Rhys Williams, Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones, Lisa Hallett/Ianto Jones
Comments: 19
Kudos: 93





	1. Ianto Jones, born 19/8/83

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought of this at 2 in the morning, and when i woke up i was still excited about so. being a filthy northern englishman i can only apologise for knowing little about both london and cardiff.

Ianto quickly learnt not to tell people about it. About the grey shrouded figures that stared mournfully or confused out at people who couldn't see them. Who lingered, in sight but unseen, only half human in shape, not quite fitting in the world, but not quite standing out from it either.  
Some looked more human than others, some had faces, and some didn't. Very few of them spoke, and when they did, it was most often difficult, bordering on impossible to understand. What they did say made very little sense, often names and questions he couldn't answer, and he didn't think they would understand if he did.

The earliest one he could remember didn't speak. It was human shaped and unsettlingly tall, although Ianto remembered being very little. In the semi-darkness of his bedroom, its skin was somewhere between blue and silver, colours bleeding into each other and marbling, translucent and stretched over thin bones with bulging, exaggerated joints. It tilted its head, long with sharp angles where its jaw would be. Its bones grated as it moved. It was looking at him with no eyes, but its gaze was piercing. An aura hung around it, grey drifting through it even as it clung to its skin.  
Ianto stared up at it, standing in the corner of his room. It was odd, but weren't monsters supposed to be scary? Surely this was a monster- in his room in the middle of the night, silently watching him. He didn't feel scared, though. It just stood there, watching him from its empty face. It looked sad, somehow, not like it was thinking of hurting him.

"Do you have a name?" He had asked after a while. It tilted its head again, as if confused, so he asked again. "Do you have a name?"  
It continued to stare, then slowly raised its equivalent of a hand- a long, spindly thing with too many appendages-, and outstretched it towards Ianto, who looked at it. He didn't want to touch it. He didn't think it would hurt him, but a little voice in his head told him he shouldn't. It was odd to look at. Dull blobs of light pulsed beneath the skin.  
Ianto looked up at the Thing. It seemed to be appraising him. He shook his head. "My name is Ianto Jones." He told it. "Are you a ghost?" It was all he could think of, but it didn't look like the ghosts on telly. It didn't move, but it seemed to be listening. Ianto wiggled down his bed, towards the Thing. It didn't move, and it felt like if it had a face, they would be making eye contact. He didn't speak again, the two just looking at each other until Ianto's eyes were heavy.  
Eventually, he fell asleep. He didn't think it would touch him whilst he slept, and when he woke the next morning, it was gone.

He saw them often, but not all the time. They varied in shape and size, but they always looked somewhat human, and that grey aura always hovered around them. The faces, when they had them, we faded and gaunt, as if they had once been there, but since started to drift.

He learnt very young that mentioning them to his parents was a bad idea. His mother would give him a look and shush him- the third time she had taken him to a doctor. The doctor smiled but didn't mean it, and told his mother that it was normal for little boys to make up friends. Ianto had wanted to argue that he had never said they were his friends, he wasn't a _little boy_ , he was five thank you very much, and this doctor was rubbish, but his mother had looked so relieved there was nothing wrong with him, he couldn't. He had let her steer him out towards the car and tell him that perhaps he should keep this between them, because his father wouldn't understand. She didn't ask about it again, and he didn't bring it up.  
His father, on the other hand, he had only mentioned it to once, in passing conversation, two years after the doctor. He had stared at him for a long time, then called his mother into the room. She had sent him out even as his father had told him to stay. Thankfully, Rhiannon wasn't far behind, and hurried him upstairs as the shouting started.

Rhiannon wasn't tremendously interested in him or his ghosts, being six years older and not wanting her little brother hanging around and annoying her friends. That same night, after he told her what the yelling was about, she just rolled her eyes and told him to stop trying to wind her up, but the next morning, when she was walking him to the bus stop to see Nana, and he explained why he'd stopped walking in the middle of the street to move around something that wasn't there, she'd sat him down and prodded him until he found something serious enough to swear on that he was telling the truth. He told her about the ones with the pale green eyes that stared, and the ones that dragged their creaking knuckles against walls where they stood. He told her about the first one he saw in his bedroom.

He didn't think she believed him, in fact he was sure she didn't from the expression on her face, but she diverted from their route and took him to the library. They found a book in the Welsh language sectioned called 'Creaduriaid Cymru'. Knowing neither of their parents spoke Welsh, she sent him onto the bus with an instruction to ask Nana to help him read it. Nana had frowned when he arrived late and presented her with it, but spent the few hours before dinner reading through it with him nonetheless. 

Nana was different to the others. She wasn't always tired, like his mum, or annoyed, like his dad, or exasperated like Rhiannon. She always had a smile for him, and instead of telling him to stop being so odd, or to make friends, she would just say 'tell me about what you're reading, cariad' and 'don't listen to him. If you have to shout to make a point, it's not a good point'.  
There was nothing like the Things he saw in the book, and when she asked why he had wanted to read it, he said it was for homework. She fixed him with a look and told him if he was going to lie, he should at least try harder. He proceeded to tell her about the Things, and she just nodded through it, then gave him a hug and told him to go and set the table. At bedtime, when he asked if she would tell his mother, she wrapped an arm around his shoulders and said that there were some things that people wouldn't understand. When he was twelve and she died, he wouldn't come out of his room for days. He hated the thought that he might see a Thing shaped like her.

He was clever enough to know not to mention it at school. People found him odd as it was, because he liked big history books and wasn't good at sports. He could count his friends on the fingers of one hand, but he didn't mind. They didn't last very long anyway. Rhiannon made fun of him sometimes, and when she was very angry she would call him a nutter and tease him about needing his 'stupid ghosts' because he couldn't make proper friends. He didn't know why everyone thought they were his friends. He never spoke to them.

When he reached secondary school, the few friends he had drifted away, eager to set themselves up with respectable people for the next five years, and Ianto didn't count. Quiet and sometimes prone to staring into 'empty' space, he was quickly labelled a weirdo, who some people would ignore, and some would avoid. His grades were good, but not amazing unless it was something that interested him, and it wasn't until year nine he actually made friends. Naturally it was with the kids no one really wanted to hang out with- the ones who lined their eyes and smoked out on the sports fields.  
It was a few weeks after Rhiannon moved out. Ianto didn't like Johnny very much. He was fine, but annoying. Big and loud and too much touching and taking the piss in the wrong way. He would wrap Ianto in big bear hugs and call him Yan even after Rhiannon told him he wasn't a fan of nicknames or being touched. He also called him 'Miss Cleo', and Ianto was always going to be angry with Rhiannon for telling him.

He couldn't stand being alone in the house with his parents. There was too much yelling, and his dad was becoming impossible. There wasn't anything he could do that didn't warrant criticism, and he didn't like the decision to stay on for A levels- 'you're not smart enough for one of those nanby pamby academic jobs, so those exams are only going to stop you getting a real one'.  
Mum didn't help, she was always tired. Tired with work, tired with her husband, or tired with her strange son-, and Ianto didn't want to make it worse. He knew about the box of wine at the back of the tallest cupboard that Rhiannon made him swear not to mention to anyone after he asked her about it when he was younger. She didn't yell, she didn't bother, just listened to her husband's raving and trusted Ianto to take care of himself. 

The losers loved weirdo Ianto who could drink a bottle of WKD in forty seconds, pick locks, and talked about ghosts when he was high. They taught him how to smoke and where to get weed, and his sister yelled at him for it when she remembered he existed. Finally he had people he didn't mind telling about the Things, and who wouldn't take the piss out of him for it. Bryn had a tattoo of the poster for the exorcist on his hip, Robin barely talked, and Natalie kept talking about how she was going to get her tongue split. They got him to draw the Things, and point out when he saw them, and joked that he should get one as a tattoo, as the guy who did Bryn's never checked ID. Nobody else wanted to talk to them, but Ianto didn't mind so much.

When they were caught with a bottle of Smirnoff and a bong behind the sports storage shed, for the first time his dad went beyond shouting and gave him a black eye. Ianto didn't think he'd mind seeing a Thing that looked like his dad.  
Ianto was good enough at slight of hand that his getting caught shoplifting wasn't an accident. He sat through the lecture in the police station, bitterly satisfied now he had more of a reason to be a disappointment. It just made his mother all the more tired, and Rhiannon gave him hell. It was the first time she'd spoken to him in two weeks.  
They made him see a councilor at school, and he decided he had nothing to lose telling her about the Things. He was wrong. It was enough for her to refer him to a proper doctor who had no regard for patient confidentiality. They called his parents, and it was enough to make the shouting worse, but not for them to care enough to make him take the medication until enough time had passed that he could lie and say it worked.

Slowly he figured out the rules- which ones could speak and which ones knew he could see them. They looked different, but similar. None of them looked the same, but he figured that it was like living people, some people with certain attributes were better at certain things. The ones with elongated eyes just watched, they knew Ianto could see them. A couple had tried to follow him, but only one had made it was far as his front door. He'd turned around and kindly explained that he couldn't let it in. It looked at him sadly, and Ianto didn't think it properly heard him, but it seemed to understand.

Two weeks before his GCSE exam week, Rhiannon had a baby. It was a little boy they called David, and mum cried. They didn't go to the hospital, but Johnny brought them round the day after she was allowed to go home. Dad was nice for a change, and mum spent as much time holding the baby as she could. David cried when Ianto held him, and his dad only made one snide comment after he handed him back to his sister. He didn't think he'd make a good uncle.  
His dad died at the end of his upper sixth form year. He couldn't bring himself to be in floods of tears. There were no Things in the graveyard, and he couldn't decide if he was disappointed.

He got good enough grades for history at one of the less famous universities in London, and told no one about the Things. He came out with a 2:1 and decided he wasn't going back to Newport, except when Rhiannon had another baby.

Torchwood One wasn't the sort of organisation you applied to work for on purpose. You sent your CV to other companies and had their interviews, then got a call from someone you'd never heard of. That was Ianto's experience anyway. He'd applied for a position on a research team at a small museum, had two interviews with a man that he would describe as just plain weird, and then got a call from someone called Yvonne Hartman, who said she was very interested in meeting with him.  
They met in a cafe in Chelsea that he felt was too posh for him to be comfortable in, but was somehow still almost empty. Hartman was a well dressed, good looking woman in her early forties, who greeted him with a wide smile and a handshake.  
"Mister Jones. According your interviewer, you are a very interesting young man."  
That hadn't prepared him for what she was about to tell him. Over the next half hour she laid out the facts of an organisation operating out of Canary Wharf that tracked and cataloged aliens and their technology, that was apparently established by Queen Victoria. Later, he would be slightly ashamed to admit how little convincing it took for him to believe it.  
When he asked what they wanted him for, she just laughed. "You're a perfect job candidate. Relevant qualifications for an archivist, low level psychic abilities for a number of other positions. Why wouldn't we want you, mister Jones?"  
"I'm sorry, low level what?"  
"According to your preliminary interviews, you showed signs of low level psychic sensitivity. You might have noticed some unusual questions."  
"Is that why he asked if I knew what colour underwear he was wearing the day before?" If he weren't so desperate for a job in this ungodly expensive city, that would've been his cue to leave and not come back.  
"I should hope so."  
"I'm not psychic."  
"Not in that way, certainly. There are various forms of psychic aptitude. We had a look at your medical history."  
Oh yay. Ianto shifted uncomfortably. There was a difference between crazy alien hunting organisations with money, and crazy alien hunting organisations with money who had access to his personal information. And the potential to release it.  
"That was just-."  
"Mister Jones, I just told you the real reason the Thames bends like that, what do you think I'm more likely to believe?"  
"Do you know what they are?"  
"That depends if you take the job."

They gave him basic psychic training, and told him his abilities were classed as 'time echo sensitive'. That's what they were, apparently. Echoes of time, people separated from their bodies and drifting through time. People who could see them were rare, and who could talk to them even rarer. He was now required to submit a report whenever he saw one, and it was a weird way of being assured he wasn't crazy, but it worked. They even had categories for them. They gave him a booklet. He decided he still preferred to call them Things.

His official job was as a junior researcher, but to be available to field teams as a consultant on time echoes, though he didn't think he was particularly qualified for the latter. It turned out that it was largely to save them using their equipment to identify what kinds they were, and occasionally asking him to talk to them. It did mean that he had to get up and drive to out of the way coordinates at a moments notice, usually early in the morning. He got to know the teams quite well, and being one of what they called the 'on call psychics' lent him something of a good reputation for the first time in his life. He was also one of the few who could really work all the coffee machines in the various break rooms, so he had two positive epithets. Within a few months, Yvonne, who had never lost the shine she had taken to him, made him one of her personal assistants, though he was still on call for the Things.  
He liked parts of working for Torchwood One. He liked the organisation and a lot of the people he worked with. He didn't like Retcon or the secrecy and the NDAs he had to sign all the time. He really liked Lisa Hallet.  
She was smart as a whip and funny, and gorgeous, and totally out of his league. He met her before one shift in Cabot Square. She worked in acquisitions and recognised him from 'the best coffee she'd ever had'. She told him she liked his accent, and asked if he wanted to come to a leaving do. He liked her immediately, and had no idea what to do about it. Yvonne, who could do piercing stares second only to his nan, fixed him with one and told him it had been long enough and to ask her out before he drove her mad. He took her to a Chinese restaurant and then invited her back to his flat to watch Goldeneye. She told him plainly that she didn't like it half way through, but when he became flustered and apologised, and said she didn't have to stay, she sighed, kissed him, and told him that next time she would organise something. He thought she was just humouring him, until she asked why he never invited him into his room. After he explained she teased him for being a gentleman and assured him that she wouldn't have come back the sixth time if she didn't like him. He'd never liked anyone as much as he liked her. They were going to move in together a week before Yvonne told him he would be on long shifts for the ghost project.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i'm two weeks away from my final uni deadlines, and decided to sack off the last thousand words of my research project and write torchwood fanfiction. pray for me lads.
> 
> also comments give me life.
> 
> i'm on tumblr at jackshawaiianshirt


	2. The Battle of Canary Wharf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Ghost Project and the Battle of Canary Wharf. Basically some big Ianto beating in this chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I blinked whilst waiting for uni results and two months passed. Yikes.

Ianto hated the ghost project. He absolutely hated it. They weren't ghosts. He said it a thousand times- to himself, to Lisa, to everyone in the shift room, and anyone else who would listen. Yvonne wasn't interesting in anything he had to say on the matter after he told her. The usual pleasant smile she wore for her employees died and hardened into carefully neutral disappointment.  
"Ianto, you're not senior enough to have an opinion on this project. You're not an expert, just do your job." 

He hated every ghost shift and every objectively _wrong_ piece of research. But they weren't listening to any of the echo sensitives, so excited about their new breakthrough that they invented new kinds of rift echoes for them to be. Every time they started a shift, it felt like his head was splitting wide open, and it was all he could do to stay in the room. After they became regular shifts, Yvonne had him trying to talk to the ghosts. They were nothing like the Things- no variation, no speech, no aura. They didn't watch in the same way, didn't say anything, just stood there, shifting on their feet. The only thing that they had in common was that there was no way to tell who- or what, in Ianto's opinion- they were. There was very little for reports. Just a photo and one-sided transcript of an interview and more of Yvonne’s disappointment.

When the shifts were three times a day, and got stronger, it gave Ianto a nosebleed. Yvonne no longer wanted him there at shift activation- she had Matt, Gareth, and Adeola, and it was clear that his kind of sensitivity was no use. He was relegated to taking readings and making dots on a map where the sightings were at their most dense and fielding angry calls from the American who ran Torchwood three.  
Lisa asked questions he couldn't answer. Aside from the ghosts, Torchwood was still functioning normally, so whilst he was busy being useless and chugging soluble codeine so the headaches didn't knock him out, acquisitions was still collecting miscellaneous alien technology, knowing very little about what was happening upstairs. She said her mother had seen the ghost of her dead uncle, and teased Ianto about being jealous that he wasn't the only one who could see dead people now.

It was worse when Rhiannon called. Amid the panic of the sudden ghost appearances, she had called to make sure he was okay, then when it became more regular to say that dad was at mum's house every shift, and why didn't he come back, just for a visit? Even if he believed it was their dad, there was no way he'd try to get extra time with him, beyond the grave or not.   
So he pretended the civil service was looking into it and told her to wait for the official explanation, and no, sorry, he couldn’t be at Mica’s birthday, and yes he would call mum.

The first he knew of the slaughter at Canary Wharf was a call on his comms unit from Alex Rodman, another researcher responsible for mapping the ghosts. It was two minutes after the ghost shift was supposed to have started. 

"Ianto, are you getting anything?"  
"No. It's supposed to have started, hasn't it?"  
"Yeah. But there's nothing on the computer. No readings, have they cancelled?"  
"They would've called ahead."  
"Maybe they're running late?"  
"They're never late."  
"Sorry, mister efficiency. Can you call Yvonne?"  
Ianto rolled his eyes. He hadn't seen any of her today after one shift, she had gone downstairs in a flurry of excitement on important business. He tapped his comm, attempting to open her line, but was met by an unresponsive tone.  
"She's not there."  
"Wait, it's starting." Ianto looked at his own screen. It sprung to life, the map with his segment of Europe coming into colour as the levels started to rise.

"Bloody hell" Said Alex, always ready to complain.  
"Has this happened before?"   
"No. Not since they started getting good at the shift."   
"Power fluctuation?"  
"Maybe they just put it back a few minutes. We'll just make a note of it."  
"It's still odd."   
"Yeah, well nothing we can do about it. Wanna make us a coffee?"  
"You're half way across the floor. You know we have interns?"  
"Come on, Yan. We have a few minutes before locations come in."  
"Never ever call me Yan again and I'll make you coffee."

Alex laughed, and it was the last positive sound he heard at Canary Wharf. 

The screaming followed the alarms and the heavy footsteps. The comms were full of panic and pleas for mercy, and Ianto needed to find Lisa. The whole building stank of blood and smoke, so much that it was almost choking and Ianto could hardly breathe, even as he sprinted through the corridors.  
The alarms would be ringing in his ears for months, they had been going so long and so loud. Alongside the screaming and those heavy, clunking metal footsteps.   
Bodies heaped on every floor- those that weren't being dragged to 'upgrade', were disposed of where they were standing. He couldn't look at the faces yet. Not until he was close enough that he had to check they weren't her. He hadn't expected the waves of grey rolling off them in great swarms. It hung around the bodies differently than the Things. Stationary, cloying, like a clinging smell starting to settle. For the first time, he knew for a fact it was death. In their leaflets, Torchwood called it ‘residual disjointed rift energy’, but the simplest word for it was death.

Floor twelve, twenty three below the office they had been in when everything went to shit. Ianto had caved and made them both coffee, and they had been talking about the rugby when the ceiling exploded. They were lucky, in some ways. It was a warning to get out before the Cybermen got there. He'd heard that name on the comms, amid the screaming. A stupid, stupid name for things that were slaughtering the entire building without remorse. And the other word- Dalek. Fucking aliens, inevitably, something to do with the rift. The rift and the sodding ghost project. 

Alex was dead, he'd been shot in the back at the top of a staircase, and Ianto had watched him fall with a sickening thud, and tumble down to the next landing. There'd been half a second where he could only stare at the gaping hole in Alex's shoulder, and the broken neck before his brain clicked that he needed to _move_. That shot meant there was one of them there. Close enough to shoot him too.  
He couldn't get them all out. All of his coworkers- his _friends-,_ he had to leave them. He had to find Lisa. If he could do something good with himself, if he was going to get out, she was coming with him. That was all that mattered. She had to get out. Even if he didn’t. Especially if he didn’t.

He found what was left. Boneless and unconscious in a cradle next to half a dozen people who weren't as lucky. Her torso was encased entirely in metal that extended from halfway up her legs and wrapped around her head. Her pulse was slow and faint, but definitely there. He couldn't tell if she was breathing.  
"Lisa? Lisa." He tried to move her gently but his hands were shaking. "Lisa, it's Ianto. Oh god, Lisa, I need you to wake up."  
He had to drag her out of that building, over broken glass and smoking rubble. She didn’t stir once, even when there was a burst of gunfire right above them. Nor when the footsteps got agonisingly close and he threw them both to the ground. For long minutes he lay there, eyes screwed shut, desperately holding his breath as best he could until they passed. Lisa never moved. Everything was hot and loud and stank of six different kinds of burning, and he wondered if it would be better for him to just die here. 

By the time they were out of the building, Ianto’s legs felt as though he could never use them again, and every part of him hurt. But now he was stuck. Where the hell was he supposed to go? He couldn’t exactly drag her across London back to his flat- and he couldn’t take her on the tube. What remained of Torchwood and their associates would be there within minutes. He was too tired and everything had been so loud and it was all hopeless, so Ianto did something he was completely ashamed of. He cried. He gathered Lisa to his chest and sobbed until he was hoarse. He cried like he’d never let himself cry over anything, not the times his father had slipped in his rages, or when he had had to lock himself in his room to escape the shouting, or even when Nana died. His father had no tolerance for crying. He’d be turning in his grave if he saw his son bent over sobbing in the loading bay like it was all there was left in him.  
Between sobs he begged her to wake up, cradling her face. It was with mounting horror he registered the grey mist settling around her. There had been so much of it inside, he could reasonably tell himself it wasn’t her. But now they were out in the open, away from the heaps of bodies and the cloying stench, there was no denying it. He screwed his eyes shut for a long moment, trying to shake it. No. No, no, no, he wasn’t going to take this. It was exhaustion, that was all. He had seen so much of it, it had stuck in his vision. That had to be it. She couldn’t be gone. Not after everything.  
When he looked back at her, it was still there, clinging to her skin, weaving around the metal she was fused into, drifting gently across her face.  
“Lisa. Lisa, oh my god. Please, please wake up. Don’t leave me.” He voice was cracked and broken, damaged from all the smoke. He knew she was gone, but it didn’t stop him pleading with her. “You’re all I’ve got. Please. Lisa, come on. Lisa, wake up, you are _all I have_.”  
He clutched her tight, whispering tearful pleas, shaking uncontrollably as he begged her to wake up. And that was how UNIT clean-up found him: filthy, hysterical, clinging for dear life to the corpse of the only person he had ever been able to cry over. He had dragged her body through hell, and this was what came out of it: him, alone, not even knowing how long she had been dead.

He didn’t know how long he sat there before hands were trying to pry him off her. If they had tried to speak to him on their approach, Ianto hadn’t heard them. They weren’t gentle, and he put up as much of a fight as he still could. In retrospect, he was lucky they didn’t shoot him, though it was probably because they thought it wasn’t worth it. They manhandled him away from her body as he kicked and screamed with all the impact of a small child throwing a conniption. One of them got him with one of his arms twisted behind his back, one of theirs across his throat. They were inspecting Lisa’s body, one agent motioning to another to help them lift her. He wasn’t going to let them take her. Not now. He couldn’t struggle properly, on account of the resulting blockage to his windpipe, but he still tried to kick. He needed to go with her. Even if she was dead, he couldn’t leave her alone, not stuffed into some metal suit for them to pick apart.   
“Where are you taking her?! Fucking let go of me! Lisa!”  
“Should we just knock him out?” He heard one behind him ask. “Counts as treatment for shock.”  
“Shut up, Barnes. Hey,” He was turned around with some degree of force, the one who had been holding him gripping his both of his upper arms tightly. Their face was covered by something resembling a police riot helmet. “hey. Do you work here?” Ianto didn’t say anything, squirming in their grip, trying desperately to turn around. The agent shook him. “Are you personnel?”  
“Where are you taking her?” He needed to know. If he could just get them to see, to understand, they let him go. He needed to go with her.  
“Are you personnel?”  
“Where are you taking her?” Ianto repeated his question. “I need to go with her.”  
“Christ. We’re not going to get anything out of him like this.” Said the first one.  
“Shut _up_.” The other one snapped before turning back to Ianto. “Do. You. Work. Here?”  
“ _Where are you taking her?_ ” His voice hadn’t lost its volume, but it was cracking worse than ever, just about still managing to scream.  
“Seriously, knock him out. He’s hysterical.” Said the other one, who had moved round behind him, evidently in case he did manage to wriggle out of their grip.  
“She’s dead.”  
“Tell me where you’re taking her, let me go with her. She needs me with her.” Ianto struggled harder, but to no avail. “Let me _go!_ ”  
“Can’t do that. Now, listen, no, _listen_.” He was shaken again. “I want your name and your ID number. Or you’re getting a knock on the head and we go through your pockets.”  
“She-”  
“Your girlfriend? Hmm?” Ianto managed a stiff nod. “She’s dead. I don’t know where they’ll take her, but you’re not going with unless you’re in a body bag. Understand?” When Ianto opened his mouth to protest that abhorrent fucking sentence, the agent slapped him. It wasn’t as hard as he’d been slapped before, but it did serve to bring his attention back. “Nod or shake your head.” He managed another nod. “Name and ID number.” Ianto was still trying to turn around, or at least look over his shoulder, so the agent slapped him again. “Name and ID number, now.”  
“Ianto Jones. I don’t, I, uh, I-” He couldn’t remember his number for the life of him. “my ID is in my pocket. I don’t remember the number. My name is Ianto Jones.” 

There were six survivors from Torchwood One. Ianto,  two security personnel, an admin assistant, an R&D technician, and an IT specialist. He had seen the IT specialist working on the Ghost Project once or twice. The whole left half of his face, and a good portion of the right was severely burnt. He made eye contact with Ianto for half a second before looking away. UNIT crowded them into a downstairs office that was relatively less destroyed than other parts of the building. Ianto was the first one put there, the others being brought down as UNIT combed the building. They were all identified against what remained of the Torchwood personnel files.  Yvonne was dead, Adeola, Matt, Gareth, and almost everyone Ianto knew was dead.  He spent the hours waiting for UNIT to decide to do with them counting them off in his head. The grey aura of death drifted around the building, leaking from the walls.

He estimated it was eight hours in that room, staring blankly at the wall before anyone came to tell them what they were supposed to do. Three UNIT agents, and two others. The woman was tall and slender, with long dark curls, and the man was broad shouldered and dark, dressed in an old-style military coat.  Ianto recognised him. He had been Yvonne’s assistant long enough to have seen a photograph of the head of Torchwood Three. His face was sombre, and he surveyed the little group of survivors with what looked like genuine despair. 

But it wasn’t the familiarity or the expression which made Ianto stare at him. There was something grossly, overwhelming _wrong_ with him. Just looking at him gave Ianto a headache. The wrongness was almost like the Things were, but not quite- similar, but very different at the same time. It took a few seconds for him to see the thin golden aura that hung around him. Ianto couldn’t help but stare, even when the man looked directly at him. He couldn’t figure it out.

The offer on the table for the survivors was thus: £5,000, the most thoroughly legally binding NDA of all time, appropriate medical attention, and the official secrets act; or £250,000, a dose of retcon strong enough to wipe out their entire employment, appropriate medical care and a medical certificate appropriate for such a long stretch of amnesia. Three of the others took it without hesitation. A quarter of a million pounds and an immediate erasure of their trauma? From that angle it was objectively a good deal.  Ianto chose the  former .

He was not going to forget Lisa. He hadn’t loved her enough to drag her body through that war-zone just to forget her at the earliest opportunity, and get paid to do it.  He wasn’t going to forget the first place he had actually  _had_ a place. Was Torchwood an objectively  _good_ organisation? Maybe not. Probably not. Almost definitely not. But he wasn’t walking away with a year long gap in his memory.

He signed the reams and reams of paperwork dully, desperate to just leave. They drove him home and left him outside his building with the promise arrangements would be made for psychological care.  
He had no idea what to do with himself. Nothing felt real. As he walked through the empty flat and the stifling quiet, the floor didn’t feel steady beneath him. The light on his answering machine was flashing. It would be Rhiannon. He stared at the light for a very long time, before taking a seat on the sofa and deciding to stare at the wall instead. He made it six hours before he started packing up boxes. He knew he wouldn’t sleep. Probably ever again. And he couldn’t stay here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The cyberbikini can die by my blade. 
> 
> Yell at me on Tumblr at Jackshawaiianshirt, if you like. Please.


	3. Chocolate, preferably dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The rift won't leave Ianto alone, no matter how much he wants to forget about Torchwood. Two meetings with Jack Harkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i did not realise it had been a month, because I am terrible. this is twice as long as previous chapters because i cannot write concisely.

All the things Ianto thought worth keeping fit into four boxes and a large duffel bag. His clothes, books, photographs- god he should really put these in frames, DVDs, and electronics, all the evidence of his life all fit into the boot of his car. He did it all with Bobby Fisher-like concentration, trying to flood his brain with deliberations on how to separate his jumpers rather than thoughts about how hundreds of people were slaughtered only hours ago. _God, what a selfish bastard you are, Jones._ His grip tightened around the cardboard box in his hand. The voice wasn’t new, but increasingly persistent. _You left them to die, Ianto._ He squeezed his eyes shut. _You left them all behind for Lisa and you couldn’t even get her out.  
_ One of the worst parts was that it was right. He felt his nails split the cardboard and opened his eyes again, letting out a long breath through his mouth. Focus on the things to be done. All the cutlery and dishware for the charity shop, call the landlord in the morning, _Alex’s broken neck at the bottom of the stairs_ , scrub down the bathroom, decide what he was going to do with the pots and pans, _the stench of blood and burning_ _meat as nearby there were more of those awful, clunking footsteps,_ what was he going to do with the rug?, _why weren’t his hands steady?,_ _why could he hear_ _someone screaming for their mother?_ No. No he couldn’t. He was thinking about how best to fit all his books into the right box. Attention to detail.

The things that reminded him of Lisa went in their own box. As he packed them up he stared intently at anything inconsequential: a cracked spine on a book, a wonky grain on a picture frame. If he looked at her face he would start crying again, and he didn’t have time for that.  
He found his PDA and rift activity locator in the drawer of his bedside table. They were left over from when he was still occasionally used in the field, put away a couple of nights before the Ghost Project got major and unneeded since. He debated throwing them out of the window for a good few minutes before shoving them into a box with shaking hands. Later, he wasn’t entirely sure why he kept them. Was it because they were pieces of his life? A piece of a time when he felt like a real, living person? Or was it simply because he didn’t want a bin man finding them? Or whoever came to sweep his flat? Either way, they were put inside a pair of his socks. They wouldn’t try and track them if they didn’t know they were missing. The mechanism to track them was probably destroyed along with most of Canary Wharf.

It would be at least ten percent of what he decided to wryly call his trauma payout to end his tenancy agreement early, but he couldn’t bear the thought of staying in London. He could try another city? Manchester or Liverpool or Glasgow or somewhere. He crossed them off his list one by one. There was a branch of Torchwood in Glasgow, and nowhere in England held particular appeal. He’d only moved here in particular because he’d wanted a university somewhere _else_ , and a bloke who sometimes stared at things no one else could see wouldn’t even warrant a raised eyebrow here. He had everything packed up in his car and no intended destination when Rhiannon called for the sixth time in thirty six hours. He should pick up. He knew he should- let her know he wasn’t dead somewhere, as she was probably convinced he was- though would it be so bad if he were? But he didn’t. He waited as it rang through to voicemail, then shoved his phone into the box with the PDA. He couldn’t talk to anyone right now. He packed everything into his car and sat in the driver’s seat staring at the wall of the car park, trying to focus on trying to figure out if there was a way he could get the money back that he’d paid for a year-long permit. He could hear his phone vibrating in the boot.  
By his estimate, he sat there for a good hour and a half before shoving a CD in the player and pulling out of his parking space. It was coming up on half past seven in the morning by now, and he had no idea where he was going.

There was a Thing stood by the car park exit. Ianto noticed it so suddenly he almost crashed into the concrete traffic island. Probably not a good state of mind for him to be driving, in retrospect. As it was, he stopped dead, parked at an angle across the entrance and stared at it. It stared back at him, seemingly unfazed, as far as they could be fazed by anything. There was a sick feeling in his stomach, like he’d never had looking at one of them before. It was no different to others of the same sort- short, compared to a typical humanoid shape, and spindly, with wide blue eyes and what looked like a sunken space where a mouth once was. He’d seen them like this a hundred times- he could probably remember the classification number if he thought hard enough. So why were his palms suddenly sweaty? His heart felt less like it was beating and more like it was trying to forcefully punch its way out of his ribcage and his mouth was dry. He readjusted his hands on the steering wheel and tried to collect himself.  
That clinging grey aura hung around it in wisps, and for some reason there was a lump in his throat. He squeezed his eyes shut in some vain hope that it would have gone when he opened them. There was no coherent train of thought, just a horrible, bubbling panic. Why? They had never scared him before. He’d been mildly to extremely frustrated by them, and on one occasion got into shit with his dad for screaming at one to leave him alone after session with the stupid therapist. But he’d never actually been _afraid_ . He could hear his phone ringing again. _Fuck_. Everything was too loud and too much and he didn’t know why.

He took a few long, deep breaths, eyes still squeezed shut. _Calm down, Ianto. Don’t make a show of yourself._ But it just kept getting worse _._ The tremor in his hands was just getting worse, and it was getting harder to breathe. Eventually he had to shove his head between his knees and clench his hands behind his neck, trying to breathe through his mouth rather than his nose. He didn’t know what he was going to do. He was going to have to move his car, at least. He just needed to _calm the fuck down_. He was helped out, in a way, by the two sharp raps on his window. He would have jumped a foot in the air had his head not been spinning so fast he couldn’t see straight.

The guy who did it was actually pretty nice about it. He was in his fifties and called Ianto ‘lad’. He managed to convince him that he’d had a panic attack after somehow getting the car stuck, and the man offered to manoeuvrer his car out for him. After parking across the road in a short stay bay with Ianto in the passenger seat, he sat with him for a few minutes until he’d calmed down. He vaguely wondered if he was someone’s dad. When Ianto tried to thank him, he just waved him away and said “You going to be okay?” Ianto nodded. “Did you get it bad?” He thought about his answer for a few long seconds. When he spoke his voice was cracked.  
“They killed a lot of people at work.”  
“Jesus. You going home?” For some reason, a simple ‘no’ didn’t seem right.  
“I don’t know. Don’t know if I can face it.” The guy went to put a hand on Ianto’s shoulder but Ianto flinched in spite of himself, so instead just tapped the dashboard.  
“Go home and hug your mum, lad.” Oh god, Mum. She might be dead. His mum might be dead and he hadn’t even thought about that. Or Rhiannon. It might be Johnny calling to tell him that she was dead. Or the kids. _Fucking hell, Ianto what an absolute piece of shit you are. After a disaster most people call their family. What’s wrong with you?_ “Hey, you alright?”

Ianto let out the breath he didn’t realise he was holding, and unclenched the fist that had bunched itself in the fabric of his trouser leg.  
“Yes, yes, I’m fine.”  
“Just, sit for a bit before you try and drive again, alright? Maybe drive below the speed limit.”

He did just that. The guy left with a sympathetic smile that Ianto appreciated but also kind of hated, and he sat there for a while longer before he thought he could steer without swerving wildly around the road. The didn’t think about where he was going, just started driving, staring hard at the road ahead and found himself working his way back towards the Severn Bridge. The motorways were closed, and the traffic was crushing- everyone wanting to do what he apparently was, so it was a little over five hours before he was parking outside Rhiannon’s house.

She had seen him through the kitchen window, and opened the door before he knocked. Her greeting was ‘what the bloody hell are you playing at? I call you god knows how many times, you inconsiderate sod!’, as well as a hard smack on the arm before she ushered him inside.  
Mum was fine. Johnny was fine. The kids were fine- when he got there David was watching cartoons and Misca was having a nap. Johnny wrapped Ianto in one of his big bear hugs before he could get away from him, and Rhiannon presented him with her landline, as if they had coordinated an attack. She pushed it into his hand and told him to call their mum. She didn’t try to hug him, thankfully. Johnny was ranting from three seconds after Rhiannon had yelled through who was there, and didn’t stop whilst Ianto was on the phone, no matter how many times Rhiannon told him to shut up.  
Mum had been worried about him- he bit his tongue to keep the ‘first time for everything’ comment in-, and told him to come and see her.

  
Something Ianto would say for Johnny was that he never required a second party for a conversation. His thoughts about what happened kept him going for ages without Ianto having to mention that his work was the centre of the chaos. The government had already released the official story of hallucinations caused by domestic chemical terrorism at about ten o’clock that morning. Johnny, of course, had swallowed it immediately. Rhiannon looked at him strangely, but didn’t ask. When he asked if he could spend the night on their sofa she asked why he couldn’t stay with mum, but didn’t wait for an answer before sighing and going to find a pillow and a blanket. David wasn’t tremendously happy about being usurped from his position on the sofa, but swiftly got over it when Ianto gave him a fiver, which was the height of his interest in his uncle. Misca gave him a hug when she woke up, but quickly lost interest in him when it was evident he wasn’t going to play.

He spent the afternoon numbly watching the Davieses carry on with their day, calling his landlord to sort out cancelling his tenancy, and looking for a flat on the internet. He lost count of the number of cups of tea he made, and grimaced his way through David’s line of questioning about why he could possibly want to live in Cardiff rather than London, where the cool stuff was. It was better than Rhiannon’s after she had put the kids to bed and got the wine out.

“Why are you moving?” She asked. “You had a good job down there. They didn’t sack you did they? Because they can’t do that without a reason. You could get on to a solicitor for that.”  
“No. I just didn’t want to be there any more.” It wasn’t technically untrue.  
“Did you get caught up in all of it yesterday?” Ianto swallowed.  
“Nothing to get caught up in. It was hallucinations, like the government said.”  
“So you quit.” He had to put down his glass before he snapped the stem.  
“Yes.”  
“Have you been taking your funny pills?” She asked abruptly.  
“What?”  
“Your medication. Have you been taking it?”  
“What does that have to do with anything?”  
“Just, hallucinations and things. You’ve had them before.”  
“Why do you care?” It came out more defensive than he intended it to. Rhiannon threw her hands up.  
“Well sorry! But you turn up out of the blue with a packed up car, you don’t return my calls, and it’s not like you’ve ever been keen to hang around us, is it?”  
"Don’t…”  
“What? I’m just saying. You missed both of Misca’s last two birthdays. And David’s. Mum says you never call her.”  
“Work was-”  
“No, you were doing it since Dad died.”  
“Can we not do this?”  
“Have you been taking them?” Ianto set his jaw.  
“Yes.” He lied.  
“So this isn’t about your…” She waved a hand, looking for the phrase. “ghost thing?”  
“No. It’s not about my ghost thing.”

He didn’t think she believed him, but he refused to say anything more on the subject. He didn’t go to sleep that night. He knew he wouldn’t be able to. He wouldn’t be able to lie in the quiet with his thoughts long enough. He found a cheap flat listing in Radyr that had been up for a few months, and signed the tenancy agreement on the estate agent’s website without looking at much more than the number of bedrooms and the weekly rent. He had less luck with job listings, but there were enough museums in Cardiff that he would have a chance, and he wasn’t above a job in retail if push came to shove. He just needed something to do.

No one had tried to take his car, thankfully, as it was kind of a piece of shit that he’d bought just after university.Rhiannon told him to call her before he left, and he promised, though he didn’t really intend to keep it. After a call to the estate agent, it was fine for him to move in the same day. He managed everything in two trips from the car, and only managed to occupy himself with the few things he had for a few hours, no matter how meticulously he tried to order them. The box of Lisa’s things stayed in the car.

Radyr was a very nice suburb, with a church and a co-op and by all accounts, very nice people. The flat was nice enough too for how reasonable it was- one of four in a house that had been split.  
The next few weeks were spent looking for a job and steadfastly not wondering where Torchwood Three was. He slept maybe eighteen hours cumulatively, when he was tired enough to physically pass out. He didn’t go into Cardiff proper aside from the single job interview he had. He saw one of the Things on his way home and almost threw up. The rest of the time he had to occupy himself, so he started focusing on the minute details of everything he could think of. He had been a very thorough assistant, and applying the same level of meticulous deliberation to everything else was good for clearing his mind. However, the more he did it, the more efficient he got, so he steadily had to find more activities to fill the day.

* * *

  
He had put the PDA and rift activity locator, still in the pair of socks, in his bottom drawer and tried to forget they existed. He had once again considered throwing them out, but for some stupid, awful reason he still couldn’t do it. So instead he just pretended it wasn’t there. He had never been tremendously attached to that particular pair, anyway.  
Then the activity locator started beeping. It seemed there was a lot of rift activity in Cardiff. He should’ve expected it, of course. He knew there was a rift. According to research, there were more weevils here than anywhere else on record, and according to Yvonne, Harkness ‘somehow runs that place with an eighth of the staff he should have’. Three nights in a row it beeped before Ianto decided to stop trying to ignore it and either take the batteries out or smash the stupid thing. He made it as far as the drawer before he found he couldn’t trust the stability of his hands. After deep breaths and an attempt to think rationally, he wrenched the drawer open to swear at the damned thing.

Bute Park. A half hour drive. There was no reason for him to go. None at all. The thought filled him with utter dread, quite frankly. But for the second time in as many weeks, he found himself driving despite no desire to. Only this time there was an incessant beeping from the glove box. _Whatever the hell the_ _thing_ _is, I’ll take this stupid thing and ram it up its arse._

It was a weevil- a large, angry weevil complete with the claws and snarling. But it wasn’t that part that alarmed Ianto. He had dealt with weevils before- before being made available to field teams, they had given him a certain level of combat training. The dummies had snarled and been very disconcerting.  
No, what made Ianto’s stomach turn was the person grappling with the thing. Broad-shouldered, dark, dressed in an old military coat, and swirling with that strangle, shimmering energy. Ianto wanted to throw up.  
Harkness was quite clearly losing the fight. Ianto winced as the thing took a great swipe right at the man’s neck.  
Well he couldn’t just leave him to it. Well, he could. Harkness could probably deal with it. He could’ve stayed at home- in fact he should have known that Torchwood would have come out to deal with it. He hadn’t expected that he would be dealing with it. He hadn’t really had an expectation at all to be fair. Just a desire to shut the stupid activity locator up. But Harkness was definitely losing, and apparently it just wasn’t in him to walk away. _Oh so now you can’t leave anyone behind?_

The stick was an improvised device, but effective. It fell with a heavy _crack_ on the back of the weevil’s head and certainly got its attention. It stumbled forwards with a snarl, then turned to see what had hit it. Suddenly Ianto realised just how ill equipped he was for this. He tightened his grip and moved to take another swing, but it wasn’t necessary. Harkness, now he had space, moved almost alarmingly quickly. A small black can of something came up in between them, sprayed directly into the weevil’s eyes. It reared back, howling, and Ianto had just enough time to step backwards before a large cloth bag was yanked over its head. It all happened within about three seconds, and suddenly the thing was limp in Harkness’ grip. Ianto caught his breath.

“Thanks.” He managed after a second, gesturing at the weevil.  
“No, thank you.” Harkness looked him up and down. Up close, the stuff floating around him wasn’t actually gold. It was more like little shifting fragments of static- like the kind you would get on a digital television. It flickered in and out around him and made Ianto’s eyes feel like they were burning. When he moved, the stuff shifted with him, almost glitching in and out of reality. There was something very, incredibly, fundamentally _wrong_ about it. There was no word he could put on it- it was different to the Things. He really didn’t like looking at him, so he looked at a spot over his shoulder, remarking idly as his eyes moved that there was a cut on the man’s neck.

“And you are?”  
“Jones.” _First name,_ _idiot_ _._ “Ianto Jones.”  
“Nice to meet you, Jones, Ianto Jones.” He mangled the pronunciation, naturally. “Captain Jack Harkness.” He extended a hand. Ianto stared at it.  
Of course he didn’t know who he was. He was no one. Someone he’d seen across a room for a few minutes a few months ago. One of six survivors he’d barely looked at in a building full of more important things. In that moment Ianto felt a strong flare of dislike for this man. He turned his attention to the weevil. It was whining quietly. _Me too, mate._ _Sorry._  
“Lucky escape.” He remarked tersely and Harkness retracted his hand. “God, he supposed the retcon was coming. Harkness tilted his chin up.  
“I had it under control.”  
“You think so?” He wanted it to be more like a smooth line than a grumpy challenge, but he had no luck. “You're,” He went to gesture towards the cut on Harkness’ neck, only to find it was no longer there. “er, you _were_ bleeding.” Harkness touched the area with two fingers and examined them. He smiled as the crackling energy danced around him.  
“Had worse from shaving.” That irked him for some reason. Perhaps the unnecessary introduction and the forced bonhomie.  
“Looked like a Weevil to me.” Ianto nodded at it. Harkness’ brow creased for less than half a second before the smile was back.  
“I've no idea what you're talking about.” God he was a shit liar. He got to his feet and patted the weevil on the shoulder. “Ill take him from here. Thanks for the assistance.” Ianto didn’t say anything, just watched him go, hauling the weevil alongside him. He wondered idly how long it would be before he woke up with a gap in his memory.

* * *

It was three weeks before the rift gave him another little present. Well, big present. A big present with wings. He did wonder space/time cracks had the capability to hate, because if they did, Cardiff’s certainly hated him.  
He’d had a second job interview for a small museum in Cardiff central and decided to do a shop before driving home , then ended up going on a very long walk to occupy himself. It had been a nice enough evening, actually, even if he was being a rubbish twenty three year old. It was when he got back to the car and heard that infernal beeping again the night turned sour.  
He’d left it in the glove compartment since the incident with the weevil with the PDA, and he actually retrieved it to take the batteries out. He’d bought a couple of bars of Bournville as part of his shop and was determined to focus on that, t hen he saw the shape of it.  
Torchwood One had refined their kit very well, having almost unlimited resources after patenting some alien technology they’d recovered. Ianto had been given one of the best ones after a particularly gruelling twenty two hour call out with a field team. They had a spare and decided they would cover more ground if everyone had one.

It wasn’t that he was too eager to see it, or that the prospect of wrangling something shaped like a giant terrifying bird was thrilling to him, but more the niggling sensation that if it got out it would probably kill someone before Harkness’ team got there, and that would be on his head. He didn’t know if Torchwood Three even had rift activity locators. He didn’t expect it to be a sodding pterodactyl. It was wheeling around a (thankfully) deserted area of Cardiff docks- largely stacks of shipping containers and warehouses. Ianto stood staring at it in awe- the sheer absurdity of seeing something so completely out of place didn’t really wear off with time. He had maybe eight seconds of admiration accomplished before the thing noticed him. It let out an ear-piercing screech and nosedived, and Ianto was barely to dive out of the way in time. He hit the tarmac and rolled, moments later feeling the rush of air where it swooped past. There was the scrape of talons on the ground not far from his head. He scrambled to his feet as it moved upwards again, looking around for some cover.  
 _What exactly was your plan here, Ianto? You were going to charge in_ _unarmed_ _with your basic field training_ _and somehow contain a massive_ _flying creature_ _. Congratulations, you are officially stupid._

As it was, he sprinted for the nearest structure- a shipping container in a stack about ten yards to his right. There was an idea half formed in his brain, he just needed breathing space. A lot of the containers around here were rented out, so there was at least some chance it would be unlocked, if not empty. He could hear the pterodactyl circling above him. He reached the container and fumbled with the handle, wrenching it upwards only to be stopped abruptly. _Shit._ There was another screech, and Ianto suddenly had nowhere to go. Sideways was his best bet, he decided, but he moved about a tenth of a second too late. Talons snagged in the fabric of his suit jacket, and Ianto felt a hot pain erupt in his shoulder as the pterodactyl moved on an upsweep for another dive. The jacket was almost in two pieces. _Think think think_. There was no Torchwood guideline for this, at least that he’d ever seen. What did they do in films? Throw a hunk of meat. _Great, Ianto, great idea, where’s your hunk of meat, exactly?_ No, wait. He patted the inside pocket of his now ruined jacked. He’d put the chocolate there when he decided to follow the rift activity signal. It wasn’t meat, but it was better than nothing. He retrieved it and snapped it in half, shrugging off the jacket and wrapping it in it. Half a plan. He could work with half a plan.

There was yet another screech as the pterodactyl turned again. There was a warehouse not far- probably owned by the same company as the shipping containers-, maybe a hundred meters. If he could get the large sliding door open, he could feasibly shut it in there. There was no way he could pick an industrial lock whilst ducking and diving. The pterodactyl started to dive and Ianto had a thought. One more dive. He just had to survive one more dive. Grimacing to swallow the pain in his shoulder, Ianto took off at a run once more. He made it about twenty feet before it happened. He tried very hard to land on his other shoulder before he rolled. The pterodactyl was probably getting pissed off by now. When he was within ten feet, he stopped dead and threw the bundle at the door. God he really hoped this worked.

Attention pulled by the movement, the pterodactyl changed its course, streaking after it, smacking Ianto with a wing on the way. It crashed into the bottom of the door, tearing at the fabric bundle. Good, great, it liked the chocolate. Now he just had to get it to come back this way, somehow run past it, and hope against hope that the impact of the landing had broken the lock. God this was a terrible plan.  
He only had a few seconds to think about this, however, as the pterodactyl was already finished, and was back to looking for its intended dinner. Ianto took a deep breath. It started to move, and Ianto had to move much faster this time to get out of the way, as he didn’t have the benefit of it having to cross a certain amount of airspace. He threw himself forward as it lunged for him, only barely sailing over him, talons doing further damage to his already ruined suit. His knees would be buggered as well after this- this whole situation was ridiculous. As soon as it had passed overhead, he was on his feet, running as fast as was humanly possible for the warehouse door. _Please work, please work, please work_ . _Oh thank Christ._ The lock wasn’t broken, but the bottom of the door had been hit hard enough to sheer it away from the hasp set onto the ground. The pterodactyl squawked indignantly behind him. It had overshot, so he had a few seconds. He still had the remains of the chocolate bar in his hand. He snapped it in half again and tossed it behind him without looking as he ran, hoping that it would take the offered interruption so he would have long enough to heave the door open.

He skidded to a halt by the door, hearing the pterodactyl snapping behind him. He curled his fingers beneath the bent bottom door. Thankfully, the mechanism was intact enough that he was able to, with some effort, heave the thing over his head. He just hoped it was one that stuck where it was pushed until it was pulled down. A lot of his plan was hinging on hope.  
The second the door was clear of his fingertips, he moved inside, stepping sideways to get out of the way as the great mass of leathery wings barrelled in after him, moving straight. Once it was clear, he moved back, running backwards so he could close the door behind him. The pterodactyl was already circling, distressed at it’s sudden new environment. He had about a second to see it whirl around to face him for the dozenth time that night before he was wrenching the door back down to the floor, trapping it inside. He made it with less than a handful of milliseconds to spare, as he felt it crash into the metal on the other side, sending him careering backwards. The door held, however, even as the creature inside shrieked with displeasure.

Ianto took a few deep, shuddering breaths, heart absolutely hammering. He was alive. Shit, how the hell was he alive? He should not be alive. His hands were shaking with adrenaline and he let out a nervous laugh. Jesus Christ.  
Now what he was supposed to do? Even if the door would hold up a persistent battering, did didn’t fancy the consequences of dockers finding that thing when they came in the morning. Or the police. There was a sinking feeling in his stomach. Fuck, he had to call Harkness.  
His PDA was still in his trouser pocket, remarkably unscathed- Torchwood One built things sturdy.

It wasn’t hard to find their signal. It was encrypted, naturally, but evidently, Ianto’s PDA was more sophisticated that whatever jammer they were using- Yvonne had always said they operated on shoestrings and Copydex. Apparently, Harkness was out on another call, and it didn’t seem like they even knew about the massive prehistoric bird that had found its way into the twenty first century. They were saying something about hieroglyphics and someone’s brain. The only trouble was, the PDA was a receiver, not a transmitter, and he could only hear them, so rather than pop onto the airwaves with a PSA, and rid himself of the whole situation he found himself somehow climbing _back_ into his car and chasing down the little blob on his screen that showed where Harkness’ comms unit was transmitting from. Flashing his headlights and honking wouldn’t work, so eventually he ended up massively speeding, driving directly on a collision course with where the vehicle was likely to be, getting out, and standing in the middle of the road. It wasn’t the most dignified, or sensible, and he was definitely getting some tickets, but the way the blob swerved on his screen, Harkness didn’t seem to be overly bothered about a car trying to get his attention. Soon enough, a great black SUV came speeding around the corner, right at him. Ianto had to will himself not to screw his eyes shut. Thankfully, it came to a screaming stop about five meters before it hit him. He steeled himself.

Harkness climbed out of the driver’s side.  
“Ianto Jones.” His expression was a mix between delight and absolute fury, and he still didn’t pronounce his name right, though he said it like an accusation. “What the hell are you doing? I know you were from Torchwood One, but you can’t-” Ianto held up a hand, speaking loudly before he could say anything else.  
“There’s a pterodactyl in a warehouse on Cardiff docks. I thought you might want to know.” Harkness’ eyebrows shot up.

Ianto had had a vain hope that Harkness might let him go at that point. That he might have seen fight to deal with it himself and let Ianto get on with his life. No such luck. Harkness had patted Ianto on the shoulder and steered him towards the SUV, drowning all of his protests with “This is a two man job, Mr Jones. It’ll be fun.” The ride in the SUV confirmed that Harkness was, in fact, a terrible driver. He overtook around traffic islands and almost hit about six different people, all whilst Ianto gave him directions.

Outside the warehouse, they could still hear the pterodactyl inside. Harkness, who had retrieved and prepared a comically oversized hypodermic needle, was wearing an annoying gung-ho hero grin.  
“Okay, is that the only special equipment you have?” Ianto asked, eyeing it.  
“Yeah, because I keep dinosaur nets in the back of the SUV.” Harkness said it as if it was completely stupid, which Ianto thought was a little unfair, considering that there was a living pterodactyl on the other side of the door.  
“It’s not a dinosaur.”  
“What?”  
“Pterodactyls aren’t dinosaurs. They’re flying reptiles.”  
“Does it matter?”  
“Torchwood London would’ve kept a net in the car.” It was petty, but it was true. Harkness gave him a look. Ianto rolled his eyes and moved to open the smaller door. It was a bad time, as the creature screeched and dived for them. He immediately pulled it closed again.  
“How did you find it?” Harkness asked. Ianto held up the rift activity locator.  
“Rift activity locator. Quality kit.” Harkness cast an eye over it. “You’re welcome to it.” Harkness nodded, placing a hand back on the doorknob.  
“Yeah, it’s quite excitable.”  
“Must be your aftershave.” Ianto muttered. This close he couldn’t help but smell it. It wasn’t bad actually.  
“Never wear any.” The smile was back.  
“You smell like that naturally?” Ianto asked before thinking about it. He could’ve kicked himself.  
“Fifty first century pheromones.” _What?_ “You people have no idea. Ready for another go?” Ianto decided to ignore it.  
“I’m game if you are.”  
“Three, two, one.” Harkness elbowed the door open, and the two scrambled inside, Harkness slamming it behind them. “Split up.”

He turned his attention to the pterodactyl, and Ianto saw his face absolutely light up. He raised his hands, as if trying to placate it. “We're not gonna harm you. You can't stay here. Come back with me. I've got somewhere nice and big where you can fly around.”  
“What exactly is your plan?” Ianto hissed. Harkness didn’t look at him, but took a step closer, holding out the syringe.  
“I’m going to be the decoy.”  
“And it will rip you to shreds.” Ianto pointed out.  
“Nah. Had them for breakfast. Had to. Only source of pre-killed food protein after the asteroid crashed. Long story. Here you go.” Why did nothing this man said make sense? He indicated with the syringe. “One injection to the central nervous cortex. Ill keep it occupied. Move.” Ianto sighed.  
“No.” He pushed it back at him.  
“What?”  
“It knows me. I’ll be a better decoy.” He’d already done it tonight, he might as well profit on how much it definitely hated him by now. Harkness shook his head.  
“Way too dangerous.” His tone was scolding.  
“No.” Ianto said firmly. “I've got a secret weapon.” He pulled what was left of the bar of chocolate out of his pocket. “Chocolate. Preferably dark.” He didn’t give Harkness time to answer before moving towards the pterodactyl slowly. He waved the chocolate vaguely. “I got your favourite. Yeah.” It looked at him, head cocked. He saw Harkness out of the corner of his eye, creeping around the edges of the room. He tossed the chocolate to it, and it immediately pounced on it. “It’s good for your serotonin levels.” He told it idly, eyes on Harkness, who was coming up closer now. His therapist had told him that once when he was about fifteen. “If you have serotonin levels.” The chocolate was gone within seconds, and Ianto watched as it turned and launched itself back into the air. With Harkness clinging on to its leg. There wasn’t much he could do except run forwards and watch and Harkness whooped, clinging on for dear life. It circled, screeching, apparently trying to shake the man off. God he was going to die, the idiot. Slowly, he managed to haul himself up into a slightly better position, then after nodding at Ianto, stuck the needle into the thing’s leg. It squawked in protest, and within seconds, it began lilting wildly, no longer in control of itself.

“Woah! Ianto!” Ianto was watching, and then suddenly, the wind was knocked out of him and he hit the floor as Harkness landed heavily on top of him. He went down with an embarrassing, half yelp, half curse. He was just thankful that he didn’t hit his head too hard.  
Both of them were breathing heavily, and Ianto could feel Harkness’ heart through his chest. The pterodactyl was still screeching, bouncing off the walls.  
“Sorry.” Said Harkness after a minute, both of them still trying to catch their breath. Then, there was a dark shape falling rapidly towards them, and Ianto heaved them sideways out of the way of the now unconscious reptile.

They stayed there for a few long seconds, tremendously relieved to be alive. Harkness made quite a lot of eye contact. That stuff flitted around him. Ianto wriggled out from under him and stood up.  
“I should go.”  
“Wait.” Ianto turned around. Harkness dusted himself off. “Ianto Jones. I looked you up y’know- I thought you were familiar.” Ianto didn’t say anything. Okay, they were going to have the conversation. It was a lie- if he’d recognised him he would have said so. “Canary Wharf.” It wasn’t a question, just a quiet statement.  
“We spoke on the phone too.” Ianto shrugged. “You yelled. A lot.” Harkness studied his face, a frown creasing his brow.  
“You’re Yvonne Hartman’s PA.” That sent a stab of hurt through Ianto.  
“You said you looked me up.” He pointed out.  
“The time echo sensitive. She really liked you.” There was something Ianto didn’t like about the idea of them having conversations about him, but there wasn’t a second he didn’t believe it. Harkness was looking at him with an odd expression. Ianto looked at his shoes- whatever it was hanging around him was giving him a headache behind his eyes.  
“She liked everyone.” He told the undone lace of his left shoe.  
“You didn’t take the retcon.”  
“No. Are you going to make me?” His tone wasn’t unlike that of a pouty child daring someone bigger in the playground to a fight. Harkness shifted, and Ianto imagined he was squaring his shoulders. He thought it was a reasonable enough question- one thing he hadn’t liked about Torchwood One was that they were quite liberal with their clean-up operations, and Ianto didn’t doubt they wouldn’t always respect the consent of employees leaving the organisation.  
“No. But I need to know if you’re gonna be a problem.”  
“I’m not going to blow up Torchwood. I don’t even know where it is.”  
“You see dead people.” The conversational U-turn was unexpected, but probably inevitable.  
“What’s your point?”  
“Are you always this standoffish?”  
“Depends on the conversation.” Harkness chuckled. Ianto didn’t know if it was the encroaching headache, the circumstances, or just what he was like, but for some reason everything he did, Ianto found somewhat annoying.  
“What do I look like to you?” He asked abruptly.  
“What?” He clicked his fingers under Ianto’s nose. Reflexively, Ianto smacked his hand away. He looked up, just to find Harkness staring at him intently. “Sorry. I don’t like that.”  
“Alright. Answer the question, Ianto Jones.” Ianto thought about his answer for a few long seconds, trying to determine what the right one was. It was a real possibility that if he wasn’t supposed to know about whatever it was that was going on with him, he could find retcon in anything he tried to eat or drink for the next few weeks.  
“Am I supposed to see something?” He ventured after a while.  
“Do you?” Harkness knew he did. He could tell from the tone- pushing, yet purposefully light. Ianto was suddenly pretty sure he knew the right answer.  
“I mean,” Ianto swallowed. “I can see that coat’s had better days.” Harkness didn’t say anything, just tilted his chin up, still regarding Ianto carefully. After the silence was stretching so far as to become uncomfortable, he said:  
“What’s wrong with my coat? It’s classic.” He sounded genuinely offended. Ianto felt himself exhale, and had to manually finish the action through his nose.  
“You have a tear at the bottom.” He pointed in the general direction of where Harkness had tossed it. “Near the back centre seam, right above the bottom hem. It’s not too bad.” Harkness blinked, then a smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth.  
“So you were getting a good look?” Ianto felt heat rising in his face. He couldn’t deny the man was attractive- broad, dark, a vintage Hollywood type look-, and that thought made the resulting slight flutter in his stomach curdle. _Moving on already? And a man, Ianto, really? What is your damage?_ Ianto returned his gaze to the ground.  
“I can appreciate a good coat.” He took a deep breath and went to stand. “So, if you’re not going to retcon me, I’ll leave you to it.” Harkness faltered. He was deliberating something, and that set an uneasy feeling in Ianto’s stomach.

“I mean. I could use a hand getting her back to the office.” Ianto looked up at him sharply.  
“Sorry?” Harkness patted the unconscious form of the pterodactyl.  
“She’s quite big. It’s a four hand job.” He grinned at his own semi-innuendo.  
“I’m sure you can manage.” Whatever reason Harkness had for getting him back to Torchwood, he could bloody well come out and say it. Ianto was in no mood for ulterior motives. “Or you could call someone on your team.” Harkness considered it.  
“Yeah. But since you’re already here…”  
“Look, if you want something from me, just ask, please.” He didn’t mean to snap. At least he remembered the ‘please’. Harkness looked at him for a moment, then nodded, that stupid smile still in place.  
“You’re gonna make me come out and say it, huh?”  
“You could’ve said it ten minutes ago.”  
“You’re very blunt, Ianto Jones.” He didn’t look angry. “Very Welsh.”  
“My night was interrupted by a prehistoric flying reptile. And my suit’s ruined.” God he sounded sulky. And Harkness noticed, barking out a laugh.  
“It’s a good suit.”  
“ _Was_ there something that you wanted to ask me?” Ianto asked. The adrenaline was burning out and he was feeling irritable.  
“Do you want a job?”

Ianto had suspected it was a possibility, but he was still only just able to stop the loud snort than involuntarily escaped.  
“Sorry. A job?”  
“Yeah. We could use a guy like you.”  
“Who can see dead people?”  
“Who can wrangle not-dinosaurs.” Ianto raised an eyebrow. Harkness did an ‘okay, you got me’ expression. “And who can see dead people- always useful.”  
“What makes you think I would want a job at Torchwood-” He swallowed the words ‘after Canary Wharf’.  
“You kept the activity locator. You got this thing contained. Most people would leave it alone.”  
“To eat people?”  
“You really wanna work in a shop after doing things like this?” Harkness spread his hands in the direction of the pterodactyl.  
“Would you ask me if I weren’t time echo sensitive?” Harkness folded his arms once more.  
“Possibly not.” He sighed. “Look, I severed all ties to London and the way they ran things. But from your file you were a good researcher, you turned down the retcon, you’re capable, and you seem like a nice kid.” It was going well until the last point, which sort of made him want to smack him.  
“And what would the job title be?” He decided to entertain the notion for a minute.  
“We need a researcher. And someone to manage the archives. And subdue a weevil occasionally.”  
“So, a general factotum?”  
“If you want. Just think about it?”

Ianto hated the fact that he even did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't have a beta and apparently love short sentences. sorry. thank you so much for lovely comments- they make my day. 
> 
> i'm on tumblr at jackshawaiianshirt


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